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hypnosec writes "The MPAA and Gary Fung, owner of IsoHunt.com, have settled their case out of court, with the torrent indexing site closing as part of the deal. The judge presiding over the MPAA vs. IsoHunt.com case, Jacqueline Chooljian, canceled the hearing which was planned after she was informed that both the parties have settled outside court. 'The website isoHunt.com today agreed to halt all operations worldwide in connection with a settlement of the major movie studios' landmark copyright lawsuit against the site and its operator Gary Fung' reads the press release."
Only a few days after the MPAA was accosted by the judge for seeking damages several times the total worth of isoHunt: "But if you strip him of all his assets — and you’re suggesting that a much lesser number of copyright infringements would accomplish that, where is the deterrence by telling the world that you took someone’s resources away because of illegal conduct entirely or 50 times over?" Still, the settlement seems unfair: The MPAA has asked the court for $110 million, when the MPAA itself admitted that isoHunt only has $5 or $6 million. So much for the optimism for isoHunt's successor.

The takedowns mostly consist of links to forums that link to filelocker sites which have also been DMCAed, so they are of limited use in finding infringing files. Sure, a determined pirate can use them to follow a trail, but it's a lot of work.

Oh, pirates. Request for you. Those NFO files? Include hashes. File size, ed2k, aich, btih, sha1 and tth. That covers all the major hash-search-capable p2p networks. That way even if all the filelocker links are down, people can still try to use the hashes to aid in their quest.

Or upload to freenet. Why pirates haven't take to using a freenet? It is censorship resistant as you have to get every peer in the network to make sure a the file is gone. What we really need is a freenet layer over tor so that the locations of all of the users is hidden and nothing can be takendown

Freenet already has the locations of all users hidden. It's possible for a listener to determine you are using freenet, but not what you inserted or what you are retrieving. Likewise, no takedown capability.

Pirates do use freenet, but not much. That's because all that privacy comes with a performance penalty: Freenet is *slow*. Same applies to Tor.

Wow, so he tricked them into settling for $110 million when he only has about $5 mil or so in the company. TROLLED! Correct me if I'm wrong but settlements outside of court cannot be converted to wage garnishments, right? He definitely tricked them pretty well.

Not true. But hopefully IsoHunt was a corporation, not an individual proprietorship or partnership. Part of the purpose of a corporation's "legal personhood" is that wrongdoing on the part of the corporation cannot be transferred to the people who worked there or owned it. Of course, a corporation won't stop individuals for being charged with crimes, but a lawsuit settlement that bankrupts a company should not then bankrupt the individuals behind that corporation assuming they set things up properly.

This corporate protection from individual liability works for the bad guys, it works for good guys, it works for everyone.

True, although you can generally go after assets that have been transferred out of the corporation in an attempt to avoid the judgment. The dude can't just pay himself a $6,000,000 "bonus" and then tell the other side that the company's broke.

Awww, I totally would have paid myself a gigantic bonus like that and then told them they can collect the payment from the Department of Go Fuck Yourself. I would at least hire like 15 different cleaning services and take a limo everywhere, especially to court, because those are legitimate business expenses, lol.

As a fellow ham, I understand your comment regarding RFI on HF, but I don't follow with your comment regarding UHF. I've used UHF with FRS radios and interoperating with my ham rig, but I'm not copying you regarding the ownership takeback. Can you elaborate, please?

There is a ham allocation in the US that covers part of the 2.4 GHz spectrum used by WiFi. Part 97 use trumps Part 15 users on that part of the spectrum. I run a data link on this spectrum and can legally run at much higher power (up to 1500Watts and directional antennas) than the average home user. I only use about 5 watts, but I have a directional antenna with about 26db of gain, which puts my field strengths way up there to make it over the 5 mile link. I do try to not cause unnecessary interference

At the moment, Ofcom in the UK is trying to sell off more bandwidth in the gigahertz range which includes some secondary amateur allocation. Meanwhile hams are appreciating the infrastructure-free advantages of HF as always, and using 2m/70cm repeaters as usual, but perhaps less enthusiastic to experiment further up, partly because it's harder to build equipment, and partly because here it would be about relying on third party infrastructure or creating your own points of presence everywhere if you wanted t

I really hope they're not planning on selling off part of the 1.2 GHz and 5.8 GHz bands, and I do intend to make use of those bands in the near future. I would be unaffected since I'm under FCC oversight here in the US, but it wouldn't be good for international equipment interoperability. Yeah, I haven't messed with D-STAR at all yet simply due to equipment costs, but it does seem a lot of local clubs and EmCom folks like it.

Fully decentralized services are full of spam, viruses, trolls, hired goons, crap versions, corrupted versions and garbage. You don't need the bulk data from a centralized source - a magnet link is plenty - but if you don't want to waste a lot of time and bandwidth you want some form of crowd-sourced service to help you find good files. That means moderation, comments, ratings, votes, indexes and so on that don't decentralize well. You could of course try with some PGP "web of trust" system, but you see how

As opposed to the general BitTorrent world? How exactly would a decentralized searched engine have to cope with worse problems than the traditional ones struggle with? I'm not talking about file distribution, just about the searches.

Yes. Did you ever stop to wonder why people left KaZaA, eDonkey, Gnutella and so on for Suprnova and The Pirate Bay? We tried it 10-15 years ago and it was vastly inferior to torrent sites, what's new? Except that torrent sites have now gone torrentless and trackerless to mostly carry magnet links.

How exactly would a decentralized searched engine have to cope with worse problems than the traditional ones struggle with?

Statistics. Google has tons and tons of statistics on what links are actually relevant to the search terms, your decentralized crawler will find some random shit and return it as a hit. Search any of the networks above and you get tons of crap. Perhaps you get better results with a decentralized search engine on the web, but only because you rely on sites like TPB and other popular torrent sites to weed out most of the crap. Searching a fairly centralized resource in a decentralized way isn't exactly being decentralized.

"Imaginary damage done to imaginary property that was made with real effort for a real result taking real skill and real investment by real people."

i know people who 'have an internet band' they gave me several of their songs free they only cared about how good their music sounded. and they are using linux and open source tools for mixing etc. the cost to them was the cost of their computers of which they were already using for other reasons. so for one band the cost is already moot nearly zero. they don't

Imaginary does not necessarily mean nonexistent. It exists in somebody's mind, probably the person who paid for all that real work, and that person then feels wronged. The whole point of the justice system is to remedy that feeling, fairly.

All money is imaginary. The value of currency only exists in the minds of the people participating in that economic system. It is a shared hallucination that gains power and force because of the perceptions of the people participating in the system. Gold is useful as a non-corrosive electrical contact material. Diamonds are useful for cutting tools and some exotic electrical applications. They're value as objects of value is because of their rarity and the demand for them from the people participating

I'd go with "pretend". We pretend that ideas are like regular property, and all of this funny stuff flows from that unnatural concept. One day we'll look back on it the same way people today look at the East India Company or the Stationers Company. Beware the dangerous printing press!

Ownership of "regular property" is just as pretend as anything else. It's based on laws we created with the protection of our legal/justice system. Without that anyone could take your home that wants to and has the physical power to do it.

While it is certainly true that it is an advantage to have the government at your back when you defend "your" property, historically it has been possible to do so without a government at all (or I suppose you become the government). All you need is more strength that the person or people who try to take what you possess. Ideas require a strong government to "protect" them for you - which is impossible to do on your own. The only way to protect an idea sans government is to keep it to yourself.

Photons are not non-existant, simply because they are harder to catch does not mean one cannot cannot interact with them.

It's impossible to steal gravity, yet gravity exists.

Gravity is a function of mass, entities with mass can be stolen barring one extreme edge case where it kinda gets tricky who steals whos body of mass. That edge case also eats your light for breakfast if you wander too close.

It's impossible to steal the idea in this comment, yet the idea exists.

110 million might never be paid out, but I'm sure the MPAA will use it as a PR move. They will spin it as "If you run a site, you will owe 100's of millions".
I'm not sure I support either side in this. As cliche as it sounds two wrongs don't make a right. We have copyright laws and whether they are ridiculous or not if you break them there's a chance you will have to pay. I'd much rather see true discussion and debate on the topic than the constant one side or the other won the battle argument. If this co

Still, the settlement seems unfair: The MPAA has asked the court for $110 million, when the MPAA itself admitted that isoHunt only has $5 or $6 million.

The legal system does not hand out punishment on the basis of whether or not the defendant can pay for it; It hands it out on the basis of how much harm was done. If you run someone over and they're a cripple for the rest of their life, the Judge doesn't say "Well, you only got $20 and a cracker... so give me the $20 and we're even." You are fined and jailed on the basis of how much pain and suffering that person endured.

Unfortunately, the law says that every time you share an MP3, god kills $150,000 worth of kittens. Statutory damages don't allow for any discretion on the part of the judge. Thank Congress for that.

And the argument can also be made that proportional damages levied against very wealthy individuals or corporations is good practice, though it doesn't often happen. Fining people for dumping millions of gallons of toxic waste into the ocean the maximum $50,000 per infraction means they just video tape the whole thing, send in the tape and a check for $50,000 because it's cheaper than going to court, and much, much cheaper than disposing of the waste properly. But alas, that is not how the law is written.

The system is totally broken, but let's endeavor to be specific in our criticism of it... rather than simply saying "Oh that's unfair!"... Fairness is relative. Justice shouldn't be.

> It hands it out on the basis of how much harm was done....and there was none done here.

On the other hand, there have been a lot of limits placed on civil judgments lately. A lot of hapless tort reform astroturfers have caused a large number of tort reforms to be enacted in various places.

Chances are that if YOU personally are injured that you will never see anything close to an equitable judgement.

These absurd COPYRIGHT verdicts are due to statutory damages laws that have no relation whatsoever to any actual real damages. They are in fact a blatant short cut around proving actual damages. They have little in common with some prole being crippled. A crippled prole has to show real damages.

Chances are that if YOU personally are injured that you will never see anything close to an equitable judgement.

That's mostly because most judgements aren't against an individual but an insurance company acting on behalf of that individual. Corporations are trying to limit liability for obvious reasons -- sometimes the damage can be so enormous and terrifying to behold that juries will throw millions of dollars out of pity and disgust. Juries don't often award large piles of cash to victims when it is a person versus a person, but against a corporation they are vastly more willing to hand out large judgements.

Well said. A jury is the trier of fact; a judge is the trier of law. The judge's job is to figure out which law(s) have been broken (normally pointed out by the plaintiff and/or the criminal prosecutor), and assess from the penalties specified in the law what penalties should be applied in the case *if* the facts bear out. The public often says that it wants "justice", which the public may feel should be either more or less severe than the law specifies depending on the case, and people's state of mind, a

Statutory Damages.—
(1)... [T]he copyright owner may elect, at any time before final judgment is rendered, to recover, instead of actual damages and profits, an award of statutory damages for all infringements involved in the action, with respect to any one work, for which any one infringer is liable individually, or for which any two or more infringers are liable jointly and severally, in a sum of not less than $750 or more than $30,000 as the court considers just...
(2) In a case where the copyright owner sustains the burden of proving, and the court finds, that infringement was committed willfully, the court in its discretion may increase the award of statutory damages to a sum of not more than $150,000. In a case where the infringer sustains the burden of proving, and the court finds, that such infringer was not aware and had no reason to believe that his or her acts constituted an infringement of copyright, the court in its discretion may reduce the award of statutory damages to a sum of not less than $200....

Actually, this isn't just the judge. In Capitol v. Thomas, a jury repeatedly awarded more than the judge(s) did in every trial along the way. Because it's not just about how much damage you caused, but how much deterrent value a higher award brings. There were several juries, and they also awarded wildly different amounts; Each time the judge reduced it post-trial.

It can be inferred from this that when ordinary people review these cases, they judge them much more harshly than the judge does. This whole 'dis

Actually, this isn't just the judge. In Capitol v. Thomas, a jury repeatedly awarded more than the judge(s) did in every trial along the way. Because it's not just about how much damage you caused, but how much deterrent value a higher award brings. There were several juries, and they also awarded wildly different amounts; Each time the judge reduced it post-trial.

It can be inferred from this that when ordinary people review these cases, they judge them much more harshly than the judge does. This whole 'discretion' thing you're on about is not only very likely in play here, it's probably more generous than the average person would be given the facts of the case.

The judge, however, was reversed repeatedly by the appeals court, because the statute doesn't allowed the judge to overrule the jury in that manner. The statute says that it's the discretion of the court, not a unilateral reversal by one member of the court over the others.

Statutory damages are in a range of, as you so nicely quoted, go from $750 to $30,000 -- the judge can't pick a number outside of those ranges. And in the case of 17 USC 504(c), you only quoted part of it.

I didn't think it was relevant to discuss libraries or broadcasters. If you find fault with how I edited the quote, I did provide the link, too.

$750-30,000 is the figure quoted for infringement period. In other words, knowledge or no knowledge, that's how much you're getting slapped with.

Not so - see "innocent infringement", with has a penalty of $200 per work. Specifically: "in a

Your statement is technically correct, but it misses the intended meaning:

While there is court discretion, there is a statutory minimum. The problem is that the law doesn't state what the unit of measure for a single infringement is. So when the unit of measure is one download of one song, a $200 minimum is unreasonable. That would be $3000 for a single download of a single audio CD. If the file was torrented, the dollar amount increases exponentially as the file is shared.

While there is court discretion, there is a statutory minimum. The problem is that the law doesn't state what the unit of measure for a single infringement is. So when the unit of measure is one download of one song, a $200 minimum is unreasonable. That would be $3000 for a single download of a single audio CD. If the file was torrented, the dollar amount increases exponentially as the file is shared.

That's not true - or, technically, not true any more (and hasn't been true since the 1970s). From the statute quoted above:

[T]he copyright owner may elect, at any time before final judgment is rendered, to recover, instead of actual damages and profits, an award of statutory damages for all infringements involved in the action, with respect to any one work, for which any one infringer is liable individually, or for which any two or more infringers are liable jointly and severally, in a sum of not less than $750 or more than $30,000 as the court considers just...

The unit of measure is "one work", and applies to any and all acts of infringement with respect to that work. For example, if you download a copy of the song once, that's one infringement. If you make a copy for your friend, that's another. If you upload it to thousands of people, that's thousands of infringements... but all of these are "with respect to any on

But on the other side, by that logic, those with little money could do whatever they want because they have little to lose. And it hardly seems fair if one person were charged more for going a little bit over the speed limit while another were charged less for going much faster, just because the one can afford more and the other can afford less. The intent sounds good, but the application is unfair, which does not seem like "justice".

The fact that the site (owners) profited to the tune of multiple millions of dollars by facilitating copyright infringement kind of rubs me the wrong way. Had they done it for not much more than hosting fees I'd be more aligned with them receiving a "shut down, now" penalty.

And before I'm called a corporate shill, I fight the mess that copyright laws have become by boycotting the big content producers. They haven't made one single cent from me in many years, nor have I pirated any of their content. I've learned that I just don't need what they're selling.

Clearly there is customer demand for such a service. Maybe they should knock off the cartel crap and start selling their products the way people want them. It would be much easier to get rid of places like isoHunt if they actually had a competing service.

More likely, the path to economic domination will be followed by China, who will pick up where the US left off - just as the US picked up where the UK left off. It's all a continuum, unless some dramatic event hits the reset button.

How much of that $5-6 million will go to the musicians who, presumably/supposedly, have been losing income through the activities of ISOhunt ?
Call me cynical, but I suspect that none of it will. The money will be used to hand out bonuses to MPAA employees & lawyers and the rest to fund future MPAA activities.

Will someone please remind me what the ultimate purpose of the MPAA is supposed to be.

TOR is a poor choice for media sharing as it's not P2P. Freenet [wikipedia.org] was written as secure P2P from the ground up, and has had plenty of security review. While I don't trust anything to be safe from the NSA, the known attacks require far more resources than the *AA will ever use.

I doubt it's any faster than TOR, but being P2P if people actually started using it instead of open torrents, it would be.

The problem of course is "network effect". There's no content because no one uses it and vice versa. But it is the correct technical solution, with years in the field and years of security review.

TOR is a poor choice for media sharing as it's not P2P. Freenet [wikipedia.org] was written as secure P2P from the ground up, and has had plenty of security review. While I don't trust anything to be safe from the NSA, the known attacks require far more resources than the *AA will ever use.

I doubt it's any faster than TOR, but being P2P if people actually started using it instead of open torrents, it would be.

The problem of course is "network effect". There's no content because no one uses it and vice versa. But it is the correct technical solution, with years in the field and years of security review.

Why 'instead of'?

Freenet the torrent lists/files (or the listing sites themselves, idk, is Freenet responsive enough to do that?), which seems to be the main vulnerability according to recent **AA attack vectors...stop giving them a single point of weakness to attack. Then they can go back to suing grandmothers for having 3 copyrighted songs on their computer.

That technical fault is called "PRISM". When you have the "metadata" of all the packets on the internet, you can watch the packet leave your computer, bounce around all the tor routers, arrive at the "hidden" service and the response packet come back without needing to know what's in it. Have your guy sit there and hit reload on silk road enough times and all the other packets become background noise. Tor openly admits it has a timing attack problem, and that's exactly what th

People 'fold' because technological barriers are irrelevant when it comes to legal proceedings. For that matter, when you throw enough resources at it, the law is irrelevant to legal proceedings too. All you need is a name and enough lawyers to destroy the person's life.

That might kind of work. Another method that's proven to work is called "Netflix", aka "Amazon Prime". You want them to spend a few million dollars making something cool for you to watch, you pony up ninety-nine cents. You get what you want, the costs are covered and everyone is happy.

Except for the little detail that the most popular stuff that gets torrented is point blank not available from those sources.

checking on Iron Man 3 reference. It is only available through the mail, not streaming. Having a list of stuff I want, and having them send me what happens to be around is far less convenient than streaming at any time I feel like it.

Or, if you want to stay on the legal avenue, the top 10 of 2012 according to imdb, rather than just the #1 slot?http://www.imdb.com/year/2012/ [imdb.com]1. Avengers - yes2. Pitch Perfect - no3. The Hunger Games - yes4. The Dark Knight Rises - no5. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey - no6. Argo - no7. Django Unchained - no8. The Place Beyond the Pines - no9. Spring Breakers - no10. The Motel Life - no

2013, according to box office*, then?( * because new releases are heavily skewed toward high scores on imdb, and via box office we get to the same #1 for 2013 so far, Iron Man 3 )http://www.imdb.com/search/title?at=0&sort=boxoffice_gross_us&title_type=feature&year=2013,2013 [imdb.com]1. Iron Man 3 - no? Weird - though after some googling, perhaps it's only available from Netflix in DVD form, rather than streaming - canistream.it seems to suggests so as well? Perhaps you could clarify that one.2-10. - no

Don't get me wrong, Netflix is a wonderful service and people who just want to watch whatever movies or TV shows will find more material there than they can watch in a year. But it's not all going to be material they want to watch, the material they want to watch may not be on there, and overall it's just a poor comparison - gets even worse when you're in.nl;)

> Do you think people who use an antenna are also free loading scumbags?

No, in fact I suggested using a DVR to record shows and movies to watch them whenever you please.I replied to someone suggesting that a good plan would be for someone to put up an ad supported site serving movies they'd ripped off.On TV, the ads actually pay for the movie to be made. Doesn't that make a little more sense?

Especially if you consider that [monthly cable bill / ({# of channels * 24} / amount of hours show X is on per month)] is a helluva lot less than $0.99.

Assuming a $60/mo cable bill with 80 channels, the value to the subscriber for an hour-long show that runs once a week would be about 12.5 cents... presuming I didn't bork the math, which is quite probable.

The alternative is simply not to watch it. I don't feel so entitled to everything that I can so easily scoff at the content producers trying to get what they think is fair value for their work.

As such, I don't see a lot of "good" shows on premium cable. They've set their prices and distribution model, and it doesn't appeal to me....but that doesn't mean it's not worth $0.99 - it just means that I choose to

Actually, Netflix and Amazon Prime don't really work that well, because they only have a limited selection. If the program you want to watch is on there, then great; Netflix is only $8/month for unlimited online viewing. But if the program you want isn't on there and requires you to get both a cable subcription and an HBO subscription, well, Torrenting is the only feasible and affordable alternative. And, MythTV doesn't work for shows like that, because of the cable+HBO deal, but also because last I heard, MythTV doesn't work for premium cable channels, so you have to spend even more money for some shitty cableco-provided DVR box that doesn't work right.

If the content companies just put all their stuff on Netflix and Amazon Prime, we wouldn't be having this discussion at all, and not many people would bother with torrenting.

> As long as "whatever you want" doesn't include cable shows, overseas shows [most of which are available on cable], or (depending where you live) shows on> lesser networks such as the CW [also available on cable], then sure, PC-based DVR is awesome and free.

Yeah, if you want cable TV, get cable TV. There are about 100 movies on cable each month, so by plugging that cable TV into a DVR you can pretty much watch whatever you want whenever you want. That's what I do.

If someone runs you down, whatever lowlife ambulance chaser you manage to find will settle for the policy limits of the driver. Your fantasies about an Office Space style payday don't have any relation to reality.

Not going to happen. First of all, I've never seen a contingency contract like that, and the very idea is kind of bizarre. Secondly, if he sued you he's likely going to stop being your lawyer, and loses the ability to pursue the original defendant's assets. Thirdly, if you are doing a contingency case chances are you don't have money yourself. Fourthly, a contract like that could likely be voided by a court. Fifthly, any lawyer who tried enforcing a contract like that could just be countersued for malp

The Net worth of the company is irrelevant in determining the damages. If a guy in a in a factory fresh Porsche Cayenne SUV runs you down and leaves you paralyzed, are you any less paralyzed if it had been a barely runing 30 year old Ford Econoline? No. The worth of IsoHunt might be relvant to determining punitive damages, but they didn't seem to be at that stage yet.

Except in order to claim damages for being run over by a car and left paralyzed you actually need to be paralyzed after getting run over by a car.